Heritage roosters

new hampshire red rooster

When eggs are hatched the mix of hens and roosters is about 50/50.  The female chicks are usually sold as egg-laying hens and the roosters are either sold very cheap or killed outright at the hatchery.  This is different than what used to happen; the roosters would typically grace the table, but with the heritage breed chickens, the roosters just take a very long time to grow -- 6-7 months -- vs the cornish cross that takes 2 months. 

red leghorn / aracauna cross rooster

Every year I order around 400 male heritage breed chicks from hatcheries because my customer base likes the old-fashioned heritage birds and is willing to buy them.  In fact, I'm the only farm in my county that raises any quantity of heritage rooster, so over the past few years people who want that traditional bird have found me in greater numbers. 

barred rock rooster

It's kind of fun to raise these birds.  All sorts of colors, different behaviors, plumage, and having a mixed flock is more interesting to me as a farmer.  i like having the variety in the barnyard. 

light brahma rooster

The different growth rates are interesting, too.  The picture above is a light brahma that was the early winner in growth rates -- it grew the fastest in the first month or so -- and that faded a bit.  Some of the breeds are bigger than others. 

speckled sussex rooster

The speckled sussex, in this group of birds, has been the calmest of the bunch.   The light brahma is the largest.  the one most likely to have a harem of hens is the barred rock, and the prettiest, of this group, are the new hampshire reds.  They almost glow with their red plumage. 

Out of the original 400 I'm down to about 30 roosters.  They'll all be gone by October. I'll be ordering the next group in a month or so.

Eagles, hawks and poultry - Guinea fowl

My farm is surrounded on all sides by land that is minimally farmed.  most of the use around me is either orchards or used to graze cattle.  One one side is an 800 acre parcel managed by the Washington State Department of Fish and Game, primarily as a warm-season pasture and a cool-season stop for migrating waterfowl.  they provide access and I see people shooting birds out there all the time. 

As a result of this activity, I have quite a bit of contact with wild birds; both migrating birds, who are attracted to the lush greenery, and birds that seasonally nest in the area; raptors like eagles and hawks seem to think that this is a pretty good area to raise their young. 

I've made my piece with the raptors by doing a couple of simple things, and one of those is keeping a small number of guinea fowl that range with my poultry.   Their function in the larger flock is to provide the early warning system for aerial attacks from raptors, and they're also very good at spotting people they don't know (and sometimes people they forgot they already know) and sounding the alarm. 

Chickens and ducks quickly learn to pay attention to their calls, and while there is an occasional false alarm I pay attention to them when they start screaming, at least to figure out what they're squawking about.   

Guinea fowl are a lot more gang oriented than chickens.  Both guineas and chickens will hang out in flocks, but the guineas are a little poultry mafia.  If a chicken dares to pick a fight with a guinea it will find that it is fighting the whole guinea flock in a matter of seconds.  they'll also single out chickens or turkeys that they consider to be threats (well, guinea consider everything a threat, they're pretty paranoid birds, but maybe a bigger threat) and they'll pick on that bird.  they'll single out the bird they've chosen and drive it away, even though they're taking on birds that are twice or more their weight. 

I do get asked for them from time to time, and I'll sell them if someone really wants them, but mostly I like their watchdog tendencies and their ability to make my life easier by safeguarding less paranoid fowl. 

Note:  They really do create quite a racket.  If you think roosters are bad, you don't want guinea fowl.  However, if you have a neighbor who thinks that roosters are bad, a few guinea fowl will make the rooster noise seem insignificant.   You can also give them as gifts to children.  This is roughly the same as giving a noisy toy to a child at Christmas.  The gift that keeps on giving. 

Our fragile worldwide food system

We have a food system that is adequate to feed everyone on this planet for a price that they can afford -- at least that's the way it works most of the time.  You may not know this, but there were food riots in 2008 around the world over the price of bread, which reflected the highest price for wheat that we've seen in many years.   There are food riots going on now because of a crop failure in Russia -- the price of wheat again. 

I mention this because it's worth noting that our food system, our food supply, is pretty tight.   It produces the food we eat, and not much more.  When there's even a little bobble (or a big one, like the Russian wheat harvest failing this year) people die.  That's one reason that I think that ethanol is such a bad idea.  If you take a system that is pretty much meeting the need, and add another 2% consumption to it, suddenly the whole thing goes out of whack -- prices escalate, people speculate, there's hoarding, countries ban exports and the whole thing goes down an ugly path. 

What can you do?  The next time time that you hear someone diverting food into fuel, tell them why it's such a bad idea.  Corn is to be eaten, not to be consumed as fuel.  We have other sources of fuel, but little else we can use as food.   The same applies for destroying farmland.  We have precious few places with the fertility, water and climate to produce food.  All of the best land is already cultivated.  There is no excuse for destroying farmland. 

This blog entry inspired by this article in the NY times, U.N. Raises Concerns on Wheat Harvests